Tag: pay

  • California wants to make platforms pay for offensive user posts. The First Amendment and Section 230 say otherwise.

    California wants to make platforms pay for offensive user posts. The First Amendment and Section 230 say otherwise.

    This week, FIRE wrote to California Governor Gavin Newsom, urging him to veto SB 771, a bill that would allow users and government enforcers to sue large social media platforms for enormous sums if their algorithms relay user-generated content that contributes to violation of certain civil rights laws.

    Obviously, platforms are going to have a difficult time knowing if any given post might later be alleged to have violated a civil rights law. So to avoid the risk of huge penalties, they will simply suppress any content (and user) that is hateful or controversial — even when it is fully protected by the First Amendment.

    And that’s exactly what the California legislature wants. In its bill analysis, the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee chair made clear that their goal was not just to target unlawful speech, but to make platforms wary of hosting “hate speech” more generally:

    This cause of action is intended to impose meaningful consequences on social media platforms that continue to push hate speech . . . to provide a meaningful incentive for social media platforms to pay more attention to hate speech . . . and to be more diligent about not serving such content.

    Supporters have tried to evade SB 771’s First Amendment and Section 230 concerns, largely by obfuscating what the bill actually does. To hear them tell it, SB 711 doesn’t create any new liability, it just holds social media companies responsible if their algorithms aid and abet a violation of civil rights law, which is already illegal.

    But if you look just a little bit closer, that explanation doesn’t quite hold up. To understand why, it’s important to clarify what “aiding and abetting” liability is. Fortunately, the Supreme Court explained this just recently — and in a case also about social media algorithms to boot. 

    In Twitter v. Taamneh, the plaintiffs claimed that social media platforms had aided and abetted acts of terrorism by algorithmically arranging, promoting, and connecting users to ISIS content, and by failing to prevent ISIS from using their services after being made aware of the unlawful use.

    The Supreme Court ruled that they had not successfully made out a claim. Because aiding and abetting requires not just awareness of the wrongful goals, but also a “conscious intent to participate in, and actively further, the specific wrongful act.” All the social media platforms had done was create a communications infrastructure, which treated ISIS content just like any other content — and that is not enough.

    California law also requires knowledge, intent, and active assistance to be liable for aiding. But nobody really thinks the platforms have designed their algorithms to facilitate civil rights violations. So SB 771 has a problem. Under the existing standard, it’s never going to do anything, which is obviously not what its supporters intend. Therefore, they hope to create a new form of liability — recklessly aiding and abetting — for when platforms know there’s a serious risk of harm and choose to ignore it.

    But wait, there’s more.

    SB 771 also says that, by law, platforms are considered to have actual knowledge of how their algorithms interact with every user, including why every single piece of content will or will not be shown to them. This is just another way of saying that every platform knows there’s a chance users will be exposed to harmful content. All that’s left is for users to show that a platform consciously ignored that risk. 

    That will be trivially easy. Here’s the argument: the platform knew of the risk and still deployed the algorithm instead of trying to make it “safer.” 

    Soon, social media platforms will be liable solely for using an “unsafe” algorithm, even if they were entirely unaware of the offending content, let alone have any reason to think it’s unlawful.

    But the First Amendment requires that any liability for distributing speech must require the distributor to have knowledge of the expression’s nature and character. Otherwise, nobody would be able to distribute expression they haven’t inspected, which would “would tend to restrict the public’s access to [expression] the State could not constitutionally suppress directly.” Unfortunately for California, the very goal they want SB 771 to accomplish is what makes it unconstitutional.

    And this liability is not restricted to content recommendation algorithms (though it would still be unconstitutional if it were). SB 771 doesn’t define “algorithm” beyond the function of “relay[ing] content to users.” But every piece of content on social media, whether in a chronological or recommendation-based feed, is displayed to users using an algorithm. So SB 771 will impose liability every time any piece of content is shown on social media to any user.

    This is where Section 230 also has something to say. One of the most consequential laws governing the internet, Section 230 states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider,” and prohibits states from imposing any liability inconsistent with it. In other words, the creator of the unlawful content is responsible for it, not the service they used to do so. Section 230 has been critical to the internet’s speech-enabling character. Without it, hosting the speech of others at any meaningful scale would be far too risky.

    SB 771 tries to make an end-run around Section 230 by providing that “deploying an algorithm that relays content to users may be considered to be an act of the platform independent from the message of the content relayed.” In other words, California is trying to redefine the liability: “we’re not treating you as the publisher of that speech, we’re just holding you liable for what your algorithm does.”

    But there can be no liability without the content relayed by the algorithm. By itself, the algorithm does not cause any harm recognized by law. It’s the user-generated content that causes the ostensible civil rights violation.

    And that’s not to mention the fact that because all social media content is relayed by algorithm, it would effectively nullify Section 230 by imposing liability on all content. California cannot evade federal law by waving a magic wand and declaring the thing Section 230 protects to be something else.

    Newsom has until October 13 to make a decision. If signed, the law takes effect on Jan. 1, 2027, and in the interim, other states will likely follow suit. The result will be a less free Internet, and less free speech — until the courts inevitably strike down SB 771 after costly, wasteful litigation. Newsom must not let it come to that. The best time to avoid violating the First Amendment is now. 

    The second best time is also now.

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  • K-12 districts are fighting ransomware, but IT teams pay the price

    K-12 districts are fighting ransomware, but IT teams pay the price

    Key points:

    The education sector is making measurable progress in defending against ransomware, with fewer ransom payments, dramatically reduced costs, and faster recovery rates, according to the fifth annual Sophos State of Ransomware in Education report from Sophos.

    Still, these gains are accompanied by mounting pressures on IT teams, who report widespread stress, burnout, and career disruptions following attacks–nearly 40 percent of the 441 IT and cybersecurity leaders surveyed reported dealing with anxiety.

    Over the past five years, ransomware has emerged as one of the most pressing threats to education–with attacks becoming a daily occurrence. Primary and secondary institutions are seen by cybercriminals as “soft targets”–often underfunded, understaffed, and holding highly sensitive data. The consequences are severe: disrupted learning, strained budgets, and growing fears over student and staff privacy. Without stronger defenses, schools risk not only losing vital resources but also the trust of the communities they serve.

    Indicators of success against ransomware

    The new study demonstrates that the education sector is getting better at reacting and responding to ransomware, forcing cybercriminals to evolve their approach. Trending data from the study reveals an increase in attacks where adversaries attempt to extort money without encrypting data. Unfortunately, paying the ransom remains part of the solution for about half of all victims. However, the payment values are dropping significantly, and for those who have experienced data encryption in ransomware attacks, 97 percent were able to recover data in some way. The study found several key indicators of success against ransomware in education:

    • Stopping more attacks: When it comes to blocking attacks before files can be encrypted, both K-12 and higher education institutions reported their highest success rate in four years (67 percent and 38 percent of attacks, respectively).
    • Following the money: In the last year, ransom demands fell 73 percent (an average drop of $2.83M), while average payments dropped from $6M to $800K in lower education and from $4M to $463K in higher education.
    • Plummeting cost of recovery: Outside of ransom payments, average recovery costs dropped 77 percent in higher education and 39 percent in K-12 education. Despite this success, K-12 education reported the highest recovery bill across all industries surveyed.

    Gaps still need to be addressed

    While the education sector has made progress in limiting the impact of ransomware, serious gaps remain. In the Sophos study, 64 percent of victims reported missing or ineffective protection solutions; 66 percent cited a lack of people (either expertise or capacity) to stop attacks; and 67 percent admitted to having security gaps. These risks highlight the critical need for schools to focus on prevention, as cybercriminals develop new techniques, including AI-powered attacks.

    Highlights from the study that shed light on the gaps that still need to be addressed include:

    • AI-powered threats: K-12 education institutions reported that 22 percent of ransomware attacks had origins in phishing. With AI enabling more convincing emails, voice scams, and even deepfakes, schools risk becoming test grounds for emerging tactics.
    • High-value data: Higher education institutions, custodians of AI research and large language model datasets, remain a prime target, with exploited vulnerabilities (35 percent) and security gaps the provider was not aware of (45 percent) as leading weaknesses that were exploited by adversaries.
    • Human toll: Every institution with encrypted data reported impacts on IT staff. Over one in four staff members took leave after an attack, nearly 40 percent reported heightened stress, and more than one-third felt guilt they could not prevent the breach.

    “Ransomware attacks in education don’t just disrupt classrooms, they disrupt communities of students, families, and educators,” said Alexandra Rose, director of CTU Threat Research at Sophos. “While it’s encouraging to see schools strengthening their ability to respond, the real priority must be preventing these attacks in the first place. That requires strong planning and close collaboration with trusted partners, especially as adversaries adopt new tactics, including AI-driven threats.”

    Holding on to the gains

    Based on its work protecting thousands of educational institutions, Sophos experts recommend several steps to maintain momentum and prepare for evolving threats:

    • Focus on prevention: The dramatic success of lower education in stopping ransomware attacks before encryption offers a blueprint for broader public sector organizations. Organizations need to couple their detection and response efforts with preventing attacks before they compromise the organization.
    • Secure funding: Explore new avenues such as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s E-Rate subsidies to strengthen networks and firewalls, and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre initiatives, including its free cyber defense service for schools, to boost overall protection. These resources help schools both prevent and withstand attacks.
    • Unify strategies: Educational institutions should adopt coordinated approaches across sprawling IT estates to close visibility gaps and reduce risks before adversaries can exploit them.
    • Relieve staff burden: Ransomware takes a heavy toll on IT teams. Schools can reduce pressure and extend their capabilities by partnering with trusted providers for managed detection and response (MDR) and other around-the-clock expertise.
    • Strengthen response: Even with stronger prevention, schools must be prepared to respond when incidents occur. They can recover more quickly by building robust incident response plans, running simulations to prepare for real-world scenarios, and enhancing readiness with 24/7/365 services like MDR.

    Data for the State of Ransomware in Education 2025 report comes from a vendor-agnostic survey of 441 IT and cybersecurity leaders – 243 from K-12 education and 198 from higher education institutions hit by ransomware in the past year. The organizations surveyed ranged from 100-5,000 employees and across 17 countries. The survey was conducted between January and March 2025, and respondents were asked about their experience of ransomware over the previous 12 months.

    This press release originally appeared online.

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  • Small District to Pay $7.5 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over Sexual Abuse Decades Ago – The 74

    Small District to Pay $7.5 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over Sexual Abuse Decades Ago – The 74


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    On the eve of what was expected to be a long and gut-wrenching trial, a small school district in Santa Barbara County has settled a sexual abuse lawsuit for $7.5 million with two brothers, now 65 and 68 years old, who claimed a long-dead principal molested them in the 1970s.  

    The brothers had sought $35 million for the harm they said they suffered, an attorney for the youngest brother said.

    The settlement equals about 40% of the 350-student district’s 2025-26 budget, although the district did not disclose the terms and timetable for the payment. The district’s superintendent acknowledged in a statement that there would be an impact on the budget. 

    Board members of the Montecito Union School District announced the settlement over the weekend. The trial was scheduled to start Monday.

    The case was brought under a 2019 state law, Assembly Bill 218, that removed a statute of limitations for filing claims that employees of public agencies, including school districts and city and county governments, sexually abused children placed in their care.

    Estimates suggest settlements and jury awards could cost California school districts as much as $3 billion by one projection, and possibly a lot more. Los Angeles County alone has agreed to pay $4 billion to settle abuse claims with more pending, mostly involving plaintiffs who were once in foster care.

    With many larger lawsuits with multiple victims yet to be settled or go to trial, the financial impacts are hard to predict. Small districts are worried that multimillion-dollar verdicts could devastate budgets, if not lead to insolvency. Insurance costs, meanwhile, have soared by more than 200% in five years, according to a survey of districts.

    In the Montecito case, the brothers were seeking $35 million in damages combined, John Richards, a lawyer representing one of them, said outside of court Monday.

    Montecito is not alone in facing decades-old accusations. The San Francisco Unified School District is embroiled in an ongoing suit involving a teacher who allegedly molested a student in the mid-1960s, records show.

    School boards association helps with legal fees

    The Montecito case drew the attention of the California School Boards Association, which gave the district a $50,000 grant to help with legal costs, said spokesman Troy Flint.

    Flint said Montecito Union Superintendent Anthony Ranii has “been a staunch advocate for AB 218 reform because he understands how this well-intentioned law carries such significant unintended consequences that compromise the educational experience of current and future students.”

    Montecito Union “is just one example of what potentially awaits school districts and county offices of education statewide,” Flint added.

    The settlement came just weeks after state Assembly members let a measure that would have restored a statute of limitations to such cases, Senate Bill 577, go without a vote in the final days of the legislative session. Its sponsor, Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, said he would bring it back next year.

    At a brief hearing Monday, Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Thomas P. Anderle called the Montecito matter “a case of real consequence.” He had scheduled 17 days for trial, court records show. The district’s lawyers did not attend the hearing.

    The brothers’ lawsuit was filed in 2022 and alleged that Montecito Union’s former superintendent and principal, Stanford Kerr, molested them in the early 1970s, including raping one of them. Kerr died in 2013 at 89. He never faced criminal charges.

    A third plaintiff who also claimed Kerr abused him settled earlier with the district for $1 million. He had described a full range of abuse covering many types of conduct, which included rape, court filings state.

    Just recompense for years of suffering

    The brothers, identified in court documents as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2, pushed forward, Richards said, hoping to be compensated for years of agony. The younger of the two, Richards said, has suffered a lifetime of substance abuse, which is blamed on Kerr’s assaults. 

    “The money is nice,” Richards said, but the younger brother also seeks “social acknowledgment that what happened to (him) was terrible. He has a long way to go,” in recovering.

    The district admitted no liability in making the settlement.

    Montecito Union has no insurance coverage going back to the period the brothers said the abuse occurred — 1972 to 1978, Ranii said in a statement.

    “We were prepared to mount a vigorous defense,” he said. But the possibility of a jury awarding far more than the district could afford pushed the idea of a settlement after years of pretrial maneuvering.

    The superintendent’s statement did not directly address the brothers’ claims. It also did not mention Kerr.

    “We are deeply mindful of the enduring pain caused by sexual abuse and feel for any person who has experienced such abuse,” Ranii said in the statement.

    A large award in the event of a trial would have “diminished our ability to serve students now and well into the future,” Ranii said. “Continued litigation created exceptional financial vulnerability. Settling now allows us to stabilize operations and remain focused on today’s students.”

    Montecito is an unincorporated oceanfront community just south of Santa Barbara in the shadows of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Its residents include Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The district is one of the state’s richest, with more than $40,000 per student in funding due to tax receipts from high-value properties. 

    The district will manage the costs through a hiring freeze, staff reductions “when natural attrition occurs,” and redirecting “funds previously designated for capital repair,” Ranii said. The settlement allows the district to avoid layoffs, he said.

    The brothers’ case was built around the testimony they would have given about Kerr’s abuses, Richards said. There was no physical evidence. At one point, a district employee went to the brothers’ home and forced their parents to sign a document requiring them to make sure the boys came right home after school and avoided Kerr, according to court filings.

    Richards said the district did not produce such a document in discovery. It had no records that the boys ever attended the school, he said, although their photos appear in yearbooks. The district also had no records that Kerr ever faced accusations of abuse or sexual misconduct.

    Two school board members from Kerr’s time as superintendent said in depositions taken for the brothers’ suit that they would have taken action had they known he was abusing students, Richards said. But with the case settled, the elderly former members won’t be called to testify.

    All that remains is a final hearing that the judge scheduled for Nov. 19 to make sure the payment has been received “and that the check’s been cashed,” he said.

    Editor-at-Large John Festerwald contributed to this story.

    This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.


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  • Inquiry calls for vice-chancellor pay caps – Campus Review

    Inquiry calls for vice-chancellor pay caps – Campus Review

    A senate inquiry has recommended Australian universities cap remuneration for vice-chancellors and senior executives, finding they are rewarded too generously compared to other staff and international peers.

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  • Should a society pay for sins of the past?

    Should a society pay for sins of the past?

    The Church of England announced in January that it would pledge £100 million to address the past wrongs of its historic links with the colonial-era slave trade.

    The acknowledgment by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that it was “time to take action to address our shameful past” was a sign of a growing focus on reparations for the sufferings of slavery some two centuries after it began to be outlawed.

    At issue is the question of whether states, institutions and even individuals, whose predecessors and ancestors profited from trans-Atlantic slavery, owe a debt to the descendants of those who were forced to endure it.

    Up to 12 million enslaved Africans are estimated to have been forcibly shipped across the Atlantic from the 16th and 19th centuries by European colonisers.

    The now independent countries of the Caribbean and Africa that emerged from the colonial era have long pressed for an apology and restitution from those societies that were enriched by the trade.

    Slavery and civil rights

    In the United States, those pressuring for reparations to be paid to the descendants of slaves have highlighted the continuing economic and social pressures on many Black Americans, a century and a half after the institution of slavery was formally abolished.

    The U.S. debate has led to political controversy over who should receive reparations, with some campaigners in California pressing for potentially life-changing pay-outs to individual descendants of those exploited well into the post-slavery era. In January, Los Angeles County agreed to pay $20 million for a beach that was seized from a Black family in the 1920s and returned to their heirs this summer.

    Wider attention to the issue was spurred in part by the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020.

    His death galvanised the Black Lives Matter movement and prompted widespread demonstrations that spread from the U.S. to more than 60 countries.

    Within weeks of Floyd’s murder, anti-racism protestors in the UK had toppled the statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century Bristol merchant and slave trader who, until then, was barely known outside his home city. Other monuments to those said to have profited from the trade were also targeted.

    One factor in the wider public’s previous ignorance of Colston and others might be that the history of the slave era had traditionally been taught in Britain and elsewhere from the perspective of the positive legacy of white abolitionists such as William Wilberforce, rather than on the perpetrators of slavery.

    Restitution now for sins of the past

    The issue of reparations — should they be paid and, if so, to whom? — raises important moral and philosophical questions.

    Should modern generations pay for the crimes of their ancestors, while others are compensated for wrongs they did not personally suffer? Even the Christian Bible is ambivalent about whether the sins of the father should be visited on the son.

    In the midst of the wider theoretical debate, however, some people have already made up their own minds.

    This month [Eds: February], the family of BBC correspondent Laura Trevelyan announced they would pay £100,000 in reparations for their ancestors’ ownership of more than 1,000 enslaved Africans on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

    They also planned to visit the now independent state of Grenada to issue a public apology.

    Trevelyan and her relatives had been unaware of the slavery connection until her cousin, John Dower, uncovered it in 2016 while working on the family’s history.

    Can equity be achieved without reparations?

    Dower acknowledges the role of George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter campaign in raising the profile of the reparations debate. But he says it was the publication of a database of slaveowners by University College London that led to the revelation of his own family’s connection.

    He told News Decoder the world continued to live with the legacy of slavery. Dower is a resident of Brixton, a London neighbourhood that attracted Caribbean immigrants from the 1950s.

    “I see the effects of slavery every day of the week in terms of people’s lives and job prospects,” Dower said.

    Laura Trevelyan meanwhile acknowledges she is a beneficiary of the activities of her ancestors of which she had previously been unaware. “If anyone had ‘white privilege’, it was surely me, a descendant of Caribbean slave owners,” the London Observer quoted her as saying.

    “My own social and professional standing nearly 200 years after the abolition of slavery had to be related to my slave-owning ancestors, who used the profits to accumulate wealth and climb up the social ladder.”

    From individual action to a societal response

    Dower said he hoped the family’s contribution would act as an example. “We are giving according to our means. And it will be going to educational funding. We are talking about mentorship and knowledge exchange.”

    The actions of individuals may indeed put pressure on others linked to the slave trade.

    The government of Barbados is reported to have been in touch with the multimillionaire British Conservative MP Richard Drax, whose ancestors were among the prime movers behind the slave-based sugar economy on the Caribbean island.

    He still owns a plantation in Barbados as well as the 17th-century Drax Hall that local politicians want to turn into an Afro-centric museum.

    Barbados and other states in the Caribbean Community (Caricom) have long been campaigning for the payment of reparations from former colonial powers and the institutions that profited from slavery.

    It now seems that individuals might set a trend that politicians and institutions would be obliged to follow.

    The reparations debate remains a live one. It raises potentially divisive issues of Black and white identity that already feed the so-called culture wars. In the light of economic turmoil, it can also spur the rhetoric of those who oppose reparations on the grounds that ‘charity begins at home’.

    Those arguing for reparations perhaps have one trump card in their hand. One community was indeed compensated when the era of trans-Atlantic slavery ended. It was the slaveowners themselves.

    Money that should perhaps have gone to the victims of the slave trade went, instead, to those who had profited from their labours.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Should modern generations pay for the crimes of ancestors who owned slaves?

    2. Should people be compensated for wrongs done to their families long before they were born?

    3. If reparations are paid, should they go to individuals; governments; or to institutions that might foster greater inter-community understanding?

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  • Will the Detroit School District’s Enrollment Efforts Pay Off? – The 74

    Will the Detroit School District’s Enrollment Efforts Pay Off? – The 74


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    Despite the summer heat, Toyia Diab came out to the Summer on the Block at Pulaski Elementary-Middle School to learn what it had to offer the four grandchildren she had in tow.

    The family made their way to about a dozen tables snaking around the lawn on the side of the school. Diab listened to staff from the Detroit school district detail all of its resources over the pulsing base of loud music.

    Diab’s family was one of many the Detroit Public Schools Community District courted this summer as part of its efforts to retain families and boost enrollment. With the loss of more than 92,000 students in the last 20 years, district officials devote some of the summer break each year to getting word out about what the city’s schools have to offer.

    This year, the district ramped up efforts. It sent 40 people to canvas communities and held 19 events to create excitement about the start of school — nearly double that of previous years. It also started new initiatives, such as putting up billboards around the city. In all, the school system budgeted around $3.5 million for marketing this year. School starts Aug. 25.

    Though the district has “done a fairly good job” of recruiting new students in previous years, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told school board members at a meeting earlier this month that the main challenge is keeping them.

    As a result, this year the school system also has focused on reenrollment rates. Those numbers have become a metric the district uses to “hold schools accountable,” Vitti said, though he didn’t share how many students the district typically loses during the school year.

    “We have emphasized … the need to improve customer service and parent engagement, so that parents feel more welcome,” he said. “And we fight harder to keep students at the schools that they’re at, rather than having more of an attitude of, ‘Well, if you don’t like it here, then you can find another school.’”

    Sharlonda Buckman, assistant superintendent of family and community engagement, told Chalkbeat the district has seen a lot of “good signs” for this school year because of the number of people her office reached in the summer.

    “It’s noticeable for me, and I’ve been at this for a long time,” she said. “We’ll see what that boils down to, in terms of enrollment.”

    This year, Buckman said nearly 5,000 people went to the Summer on the Block events, parties held at schools that both serve as a vehicle to sell families on sending their kids to the district and connect them with free resources.

    “As a parent, you have to bring your kids to school every day in order to get the education that they need,” Diab said at the Pulaski back-to-school event. “But then you’ll find some schools, they just don’t have enough resources to keep them interested to come to school, to stay in school.”

    All of the district’s summer efforts produced 532 leads on parents interested in enrolling their kids by mid-August. Around 80 of those students completed enrollment, according to the district.

    Though initial enrollment numbers are up, officials say, the full impact of the district’s efforts won’t be known until the end of the 2025-26 school year.

    Myriad factors have affected enrollment in DPSCD

    Boosting student numbers has been among the district’s top priorities for years.

    The numbers of students attending schools are crucial for districts in Michigan, where school funding is tied to enrollment.

    Now that COVID relief dollars are gone and the federal government has signaled it will not renew various other funding sources, districts are bracing to rely more on local money.

    A number of factors affected the district’s enrollment over the years, including population declines in the city, lower birthrates, the state’s emergency management of the district, and the pandemic. The district also faces competition from Detroit charter schools, where around half of kids in the city go to school.

    High student mobility rates, or the rate at which kids move to different homes, contribute to the district’s difficulty in keeping children enrolled. Chronic absenteeism rates also have a direct impact on enrollment.

    Enrollment in the district was more than 156,000 in the 2002-03 school year. Last year, it was 49,000.

    When DPSCD was created and the school system began being phased out of emergency management in the 2017-18 school year, enrollment shot up to more than 50,800 from 45,700 during the 2016-17 school year.

    The district has struggled to move the needle much since, especially after drops during pandemic-era school closures and the years that followed.

    At the beginning of this month, there were 50,890 students enrolled in the district, Vitti said at the board meeting.

    “We have about 1,400 more students than we did at the end of the year enrolled in DPSCD as of today, and about 500 more as compared to the first day of school,” he said, adding that “ “enrollment is trending in a positive direction.”

    Early enrollment numbers for the district are usually higher than official headcounts made in October. The number of students recorded on “Count Day” is used by the state to calculate funding for districts.

    Making the case for DPSCD face-to-face

    Three days before the Summer on the Block at Pulaski, more than 20 people squeezed into a sun-filled classroom at the Detroit School of Arts.

    The group was contracted by the district to canvas homes in areas where attendance is low compared to the number of school-aged children living there.

    This summer, the district sent canvassers to more than 78,000 homes to inform families about its schools and programs.

    The group at the School of Arts was gathered to get their assignments for the day. They waited to pick up hand-out materials, including fliers listing Summer on the Block dates and pamphlets highlighting programs at application schools.

    To get the energy up in the classroom before they headed out, the canvassers stood up to form a circle. Buckman, the assistant superintendent, asked them to share what they heard door-knocking.

    “We’re getting a good response in terms of some of those students coming back to the district,” said one woman.

    Others expressed residents’ hesitations to open their doors or to give their contact information for the district to follow up with them.

    Laura Gomez, who has been canvassing for three years, said through a translator that this summer has been different in southwest Detroit, which is home to many immigrant and newcomer families.

    People in the neighborhood say they have seen more community members detained and deported in recent months, including a student at Western International High School.

    “There are some people that are really happy we’re going out to the houses because that way they don’t have to leave their home because they don’t feel safe,” she said.

    After the canvassers broke out into teams, they drove to the areas they were assigned to for the day.

    Tanya Shelton and her son, David, arrived in the Crary St. Mary’s neighborhood in the northwest corner of the city.

    “We’ll ask them what school district are they in, and if they are interested in DPSCD, we give some information on it,” she said as she made her way down a long block adjacent to the Southfield Freeway.

    In her conversations with families, Shelton said the district’s free school lunches piqued their interest. Other canvassers said parents were interested in learning more about the academic interventionists available to students.

    Most of the doors Shelton knocked on that day, though, went unanswered. She left the district’s literature at dozens of houses.

    Families weigh programming, academics, and transportation in selecting schools

    At Pulaski’s Summer on the Block Alexa Franco-Garcia saw more students signing up to attend the school than she has in past years.

    “Right now, I have three enrollment packets in my hand, so that means they’ve completed enrollment,” she said during a break from talking with families.

    Another three parents left their contact information and said they would return the paperwork the next day.

    Considering it was about 30 minutes into the event, that was a strong number, said Franco-Garcia, who works in the Office of Family and Community Engagement.

    In her time working in the district, Franco-Garcia has learned what kinds of questions families ask: They want to know about the curriculum, extracurricular activities, and class sizes. They wonder whether their children will be supported in special education and if they will get a bus ride to school.

    Most of the sign-ups at the Pulaski event were for kindergartners who were new to the district, Franco-Garcia said.

    Enrolling early learners is one of the districts’ top growth strategies.

    There were 457 students enrolled in prekindergarten by the beginning of August, according to the district, up about 10 compared to the same time last year.

    Diab, the grandmother, brought four kids ages 5 to 12 out to learn more about the school. They heard about the district’s community health hubs, parent academy, and mental health resources.

    Teachers from the school gathered around a welcome table ready to answer questions as Principal Tyra R. Smith-Bell floated around talking with parents.

    The fresh produce boxes, ice cream truck, free books, and kids’ activities also enticed more than 350 people to come – many more than in previous years, Buckman said.

    Linn Flake was the first second-grader of the day to enroll at Pulaski, said Franco-Garcia. It would be his first experience at a neighborhood school, she added.

    His mom, Roxanne Flake, chose DPSCD over the charter school Linn went to last year.

    “I just wanted a different start,” she said.

    The charter school didn’t provide transportation, said Flake, which was an inconvenience because she doesn’t currently have a car. But the Detroit school district offered bus service for Linn to Pulaski, the mother said.

    Diab said she had more research to do before her family committed to Pulaski.

    “We’re gonna come here and we’re gonna figure everything out – ask questions, all of that stuff, and then if it’s the right fit for them, then we’re gonna put them in,” she said.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.


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  • Recipe for Science Superpower? “Pay Your Taxes With Pride”

    Recipe for Science Superpower? “Pay Your Taxes With Pride”

    Denmark’s world-leading success in commercializing research should not be written off as a one-off confined to the country’s booming weight loss drug industry, a Nobel-winning scientist has argued.

    Since Novo Nordisk’s diabetes treatment Ozempic was sold as weight-loss drug Wegovy, the Danish biotech company has quickly grown into one of the world’s biggest companies and Denmark’s largest single corporate taxpayer, contributing almost $4 billion in corporate taxes in the year ending March 2025—about half of the country’s total corporate take.

    A further $3.8 billion in income taxes—which can reach up to 56 percent for higher earners—was also collected from Novo Nordisk staff in 2024.

    That success has led to major interest in how Denmark’s model of combined strong fundamental and applied research paid off so spectacularly and whether it can be replicated, although some pundits have wondered whether the serendipitous discovery of Ozempic—whose roots lie in research on snake venom—represents a one-shot for its industrial science sector.

    Speaking to Times Higher Education, however, the Nobel laureate Morten Meldal, who is professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, said Novo Nordisk’s story should not be seen as an outlier in Danish research but one of many prosperous science-based companies based in the country of just six million people.

    “Novo Nordisk is the result of Denmark’s system—its success is directly attributable to how our society operates: We have high taxes, but those taxes result in huge tax-exempt industrial foundations funding science and creating opportunities for both academic and industrial success. That is why Novo Nordisk happened in Denmark,” said Meldal, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2022.

    While Novo Nordisk—whose $570 billion valuation last year was famously larger than Denmark’s entire GDP—has captured the interest of research policymakers, it should be understood in a wider context of sustained investment in research from industry, he added.

    “Look at Novozymes, Maersk, Carlsberg—if you consider how much our companies invest in research, it is far more than the government. Novo Nordisk has the blockbuster product now, but it arrived within the context of our system—there are lots of companies doing well by commercializing research.”

    Noting the advances made by U.S.-based Eli Lilly, which has two medications—Mounjaro and Zepbound—approved for use by American regulators, Meldal predicted that Novo Nordisk’s undisputed advantage in this area will eventually be eroded. But Denmark’s system will produce other big science success stories, said the biochemist, who leads the synthesis group in the chemistry department at the Carlsberg Laboratory.

    “We have won so much with Novo Nordisk, but its scientific success is the rule, not the exception,” he said, underlining the importance of basic research to create the opportunities of tomorrow.

    Denmark’s success in research has an even simpler root, continued Meldal, who was speaking at the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting held in southern Germany last month.

    “The best investment that any country can make is education; the payback on this is huge, and that allows for other investments, such as science. To do this you need our high-tax system and a government dedicated to long-term success of the entire society,” he said.

    “My advice to any country who wants Denmark’s system of science is simple: Pay your taxes with joy and ask for return on investment for the community.”

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  • Tutoring provides a much-needed on-ramp into the teaching profession. School districts should pay attention.

    Tutoring provides a much-needed on-ramp into the teaching profession. School districts should pay attention.

    After graduating from Knox College in Illinois with a bachelor’s degree, Stephanie Martinez-Calderon’s plans were upended by the pandemic. She hadn’t planned on becoming a teacher but found an opportunity to tutor remotely for the year after college. 

    Tutoring helped her build confidence and develop instructional skills, and today she’s a middle school teacher in the Washoe County School District in Nevada. 

    Tutoring can be a powerful training ground for future educators, providing hands-on experience, confidence and a bridge into the classroom. And what might begin as a temporary opportunity can become a career path at a time when teachers are needed more than ever: A recent report noted that nearly one in five K-12 teachers plan to leave teaching or are unsure if they’ll stay. 

    Turnover remains a crisis in many districts, one that can be solved by a ready-made pipeline of young future educators with instructional experience and relationship-building skills they’ve gained from tutoring.  

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education. 

    How school districts think about tutoring should evolve. Rather than seeing it as a short-term response to pandemic-interrupted learning, they should view it as part of the fabric of school design and future educator development. This requires including tutoring in strategic plans, forming community partnerships and creating a structure to sustain programs that cultivate tutors for careers in education. To fund these programs and pay tutors, districts can redirect Title I funds, use federal work-study and create apprenticeship programs.  

    Starting as a tutor allows aspiring educators to build core teaching skills in a supportive, lower-stakes environment. Tutors learn to navigate student relationships and adapt lessons to individual needs. Without having to manage an entire classroom, they can practice asking questions that get students thinking and selecting problems to help students learn. This early practice eases the transition into teaching. 

    Tutors from Generation Z, born between 1996 and 2012, often bring fresh energy to the profession. As digital natives, they are reimagining how to engage and inspire students, leverage technology and foster creativity and new approaches to learning. 

    They are also the most ethnically and racially diverse generation yet: Many come from backgrounds historically underrepresented in the teaching force; over half of undergraduates identify as first-generation college students. Their engagement broadens the prospects for a more diverse teacher pipeline. 

    Tutor recruiters have noticed that Gen Z workers don’t just want a job — they want roles committed to social impact, professional growth and sustainable work-life balance. 

    Gen Z’s emphasis on flexibility and remote opportunities is one of the most significant workforce changes since the pandemic. They value mental health, stability and mission-driven work. Part-time, hybrid and wellness benefits help recruit young talent. 

    At our nonprofit, recruiters hear from education candidates that Gen Z appreciates the chance to try out industries, and that tutoring provides them with a window into the world of teaching. 

    Public schools could better meet the evolving needs of young professionals entering education by reimagining tutor roles to include hybrid options, mental health supports and collaborative teaching pathways for professional growth. For instance, a tutor might start off working in a part-time online tutoring role, but after interacting with students virtually and gaining more experience, they may be more excited to take on a full-time teaching role on-site.  

    For school districts, tutoring programs can serve as effective recruitment pipelines. By offering recent graduates a low-barrier entry point into education — one that doesn’t require immediate certification — districts can spark interest in teaching among candidates who may not have previously considered it. 

    Amid ongoing hiring challenges, particularly mid-year vacancies, tutors can offer timely solutions.  

    When tutors step into teaching roles, they bring valuable continuity — familiarity with the students and insight into progress and school culture. This seamless transition supports both student learning and district staffing needs. 

    Related: PROOF POINTS: Taking stock of tutoring 

    The idea that tutoring should be built into future educator pipelines is spreading. For example, since the launch of its Ignite Fellowship in 2020, Teach for America says that 550 of its former tutors have become full-time teachers. The program has proven to be especially effective at drawing in nontraditional candidates — those who may not have initially envisioned themselves in the classroom. In Washington, D.C., the school district launched a tutor-to-teacher apprenticeship program after success with high-impact tutoring. In Texas, teacher residents are required to work as tutors and in other support roles while co-teaching with a mentor. 

    By offering flexible, purpose-driven opportunities, districts can attract Gen Z professionals and give them a meaningful entry point into teaching. And tutoring programs can become more than academic support — they can serve as strategic talent pipelines that strengthen the future of the teaching workforce. 

    Alan Safran is co-founder, CEO and chair of the board of Saga Education; Halley Bowman is senior director of academics. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about tutoring was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.  

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • Call an ambulance! But be ready to pay.

    Call an ambulance! But be ready to pay.

    Quick-commerce service Blinkit — best known in India for delivering groceries in 10 minutes — rolled out an ambulance service last winter promising the same speedy service and setting the nation off on a new debate about privatized medicine.

    Five ambulances equipped with lifesaving medical equipment, emergency medicines and a three-person team, including a paramedic, are now operating in Gurgaon, a relatively wealthy city north of Delhi, at 2,000 rupees or about US $23 per trip. That’s affordable for less than a third of the population.

    Touted as India’s first app-based private emergency healthcare service, this has set off a debate about its implications for a sprawling public health system that is notoriously overstretched, with only one ambulance per five million people.

    A few weeks after the service launched, one of its ambulance teams was able to stabilize a trauma patient on the way to the emergency department. This led neurosurgeon Deepak Agarwal at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a premier medical college and hospital to laud the new service on social media. He called it a “healthcare revolution” that offers care he had only read about happening in developed countries.

    It was a stark contrast, though, with the experience of Roopa Rawat Singhvi, a regional nursing lead in emergency and trauma care, who encountered a road accident victim near the hospital on 3 March.

    “I continued to call 108 and 102 (India’s version of 911) to reach ambulance services,” she said. “However, the calls were not going through.”

    After call finally went through, it took half an hour for the first responders to arrive and they were police, not an ambulance, she said.

    Healthcare for those who can pay

    This contrast — one patient whisked away with ventilatory support and trained staff, another left waiting while vital minutes passed — captures the growing debate around Blinkit’s entry into emergency healthcare.

    This contrast shows the need to explore India’s first app-based private ambulance initiative as more than just a tech innovation story, but as a symptom of a deeper tension between privatization and public neglect.

    As India’s public health infrastructure is eroding, private players are stepping into the vacated spaces under the guise of innovation. The question is: Will this be a temporary fix or a long-term threat to equitable emergency care?

    It wasn’t meant to be this way. In 2007, P.V. Ramesh was the principal health secretary of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and worked on the first National Health Mission project to establish emergency ambulance services.

    He said that the public sector ambulance services that evolved into the current nationwide emergency service started as a partnership in Andhra Pradesh between the government and a not-for-profit entity, Byrraju Foundation.

    There was a clear understanding, he said, that it would be operated strictly as a public service without a profit motive.

    “It combined the ambulances equipped with essential emergency care infrastructure, trained human resources and a call center provided by the Byrraju Foundation with the funding, hospital network and effective oversight from the public sector that served all citizens of Andhra Pradesh in case of medical or surgical emergencies,” Ramesh said.

    A dire need for ambulances

    That not-for-profit plan quickly collapsed.

    “Ambulance drivers started taking money from the private hospitals to take patients there and the private sector companies that oversaw the operations also began to cut corners,” Ramesh said. “Even doctors became complicit in the slow rotting of the system. The system deteriorated when the political and bureaucratic masters stopped monitoring the system after awarding the contracts to their favorites.”

    Pre-hospital care is far from ideal in both the public and private sectors in India, says Gayatri, an emergency medicine physician in Mumbai. Gayatri, who asked that her last name not be used, has worked in both public and private hospitals.

    “I used to work in villages in Chhattisgarh and Bihar,” she said. “In some areas, we used to call the government ambulance, but they would often refuse to come, either because it was a conflict-ridden area or because the road was in poor condition. If we put pressure and keep calling, the ambulance would come, but then the driver would ask for 3,000 to 5,000 rupees from the patient to transfer them.”

    Gayatri said that because many of her patients feel scared and disempowered, they agree to pay. “Sometimes we have to fight with the ambulance drivers and tell them not to ask for money,” she said.

    Stalling for time when saving lives

    Gayatri vividly remembers a night when she was transferring a patient in a vehicle and the patient had a cardiac arrest. She called for an ambulance, but it arrived without essential medications or even an oxygen cylinder. They had to borrow an oxygen cylinder from a referral center in a nearby village, losing time.

    “In emergencies, every minute counts,” she said. “And not having access to even an oxygen mask or cylinder in the ambulance was shocking and distressing for me.”

    But even private sector hospitals where she has worked used to send doctors trained in traditional medicine who are not qualified to administer emergency care in place of paramedics to attend home emergencies or to transport patients from emergency sites to the hospital.

    India currently has an almost non-existent emergency response system.

    According to Indian government data, there are a total of 28,250 ambulances across its states and Union Territories such as Jammu and Kashmir. This includes ambulances with advanced medical services and paramedics, vehicles that only transfer patients in non-emergency conditions, even bicycles.

    Meeting international standards

    While international standards recommend one ambulance for every 50,000 population, with one basic life support ambulance or BLS and one advanced cardiac life support ambulance or ACLS per 100,000 population, India has one ACLS ambulance for every five million people — the number in the United States is one per 25,000 population — and one BLS ambulance for every 100,000 people.

    Meanwhile, quality is a more persistent issue than quantity. According to a 2020 study by the All India Institute of Medical Science in Delhi and the National Institution for Transforming India, 90% of ambulances lacked essential medical equipment and 95% were operated by untrained professionals.

    “The corruption and deterioration of the service, coupled with a lack of infrastructure to provide adequate emergency referral systems, has created a vacuum that has invited private players to reframe this as a business opportunity,” Ramesh said.

    That’s why, he said, it makes sense for Blinkit to fill that hole. They recognized that the current system doesn’t meet the demand for reliable ambulance service in case of medical and surgical emergencies and realized they could develop a service to cater to those with the means to pay for it.

    Singhvi believes there are lessons to be learned from Blinkit’s efficiency. “They’ve hired trained paramedics, optimized logistics and used technology effectively,” Singhvi said. “Public systems could adapt these strategies to improve accessibility and response times.”

    Profits and regulations

    Ramesh said that with the current public infrastructure in shambles, he only hopes that the private ambulance companies run this service ethically and that there isn’t a monopoly that will allow them to charge unreasonable rates.

    But Gayatri does not offer them the benefit of the doubt. “Blinkit is a private company and private companies operate on the principle of making a profit,” she said. “It is unreasonable to expect that they will function in a way that keeps the welfare of the people in mind.”

    Gayatri believes that the gap is intentional. It is because of lobbying by the private sector that has made the public sector reluctant to invest in strengthening its health systems. Good regulatory oversight from the government, could prevent private companies from charging too much, but Ramesh is not optimistic it will happen.

    “Even if robust regulations are formulated and a law is enacted, does the government have the capacity to enforce it?” he said. “Regulations have not been successful in the health sector.”

    Instead, Ramesh said that the emergence of private ambulance services should be seen as a wake-up call to the government to strengthen public sector ambulance services.

    Ramesh acknowledges that Blinkit fills a need. But ultimately, while Blinkit’s initiative may cater to a small, affluent population segment, it underscores the urgent need to address the systemic inadequacies plaguing public healthcare.

    “If they provide equitable, high-quality service at a fair price, without bias toward certain hospitals, they could complement existing healthcare services,” he said. “But private models inherently exclude the poor. In a country where universal health care isn’t prioritized, do people have an alternative?”

    Questions to consider:

    1. What are the concerns some people have over private ambulance services?

    2. How can a government ensure that an ambulance service won’t gouge people in need?

    3. Do you know how to call for an ambulance and do you know how long it might take to reach you if you needed one?

     

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  • Pay Attention to “The Manhattan Statement” (opinion)

    Pay Attention to “The Manhattan Statement” (opinion)

    Earlier this month, the Manhattan Institute released a statement with a proposed “new contract” for higher education and called on President Trump to write the terms of that contract into “every grant, payment, loan, eligibility, and accreditation” and then revoke federal funding for colleges and universities if they aren’t following them. To maintain public funding, universities would, for example, have to “advance truth over ideology,” “cease their direct participation in social and political activism,” and “adhere to the principle of colorblind equality, by abolishing DEI bureaucracies, disbanding racially segregated programs, and terminating race-based discrimination in admissions, hiring, promotions, and contracting.”

    Another term of the proposed contract would require universities to enact “swift and significant penalties, including suspension and expulsion, for anyone who would disrupt speakers, vandalize property, occupy buildings, call for violence, or interrupt the operations of the university.”

    You may be thinking: Well, think tanks and political actors publish things like this all the time. What’s the big deal?

    This proposed list of reforms was led by the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, who has been the architect of many of the attacks on higher ed that we have seen come out of the White House and the Department of Education over the last six months.

    But what is more concerning is it was signed by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx—former chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee who oversaw the first subpoena sent to a higher education institution under the pretext of fighting antisemitism on campus. It was also endorsed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who posted on X to congratulate the Manhattan Institute for “envisioning a compelling roadmap to restore integrity and rigor to the American academy!”

    All this brings to mind Project 2025—an initiative led by another conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, which Democrats warned the American people about before the election and that has since been largely followed as a policy agenda for the Trump administration. You may remember that the education chapter of this conservative platform was written by the director of Heritage’s Center for Education Policy, Lindsey Burke—the same person now serving as the deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at the U.S. Department of Education.

    As predicted, the policy proposals in Project 2025 mirror those being pursued by the current leadership at the Department of Education. Providing universities more flexibility on accreditation; rescinding the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations; eliminating the disparate impact standard in civil rights cases; phasing out existing income-driven repayment plans; eliminating GEAR UP; transferring programs from the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education to the Department of Labor; and capping indirect cost rates for federal science grants are just a few of the policies in Project 2025 that have started to come to fruition in the Trump administration.

    We now have another road map that college leadership and policymakers need to be ready to push back on. As noted above, the Manhattan Institute’s agenda is comprised of pledges for colleges and universities that include ending participation in social and political activism; abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion programs; ending race-based decisions in hiring, promotions and contracting; and enacting restrictions on free speech. In other words, it is a road map for a new level of federal interference into the administration of colleges and universities. It is not a road map for reforms that will help students. Rather, it is an attempt to undermine the independence of our higher ed institutions by dictating policies—those based on a specific political ideology—in exchange for federal funding.

    What’s next? Just like the proposals in Project 2025, Christopher Rufo’s proposals have had a pretty good track record of being implemented by the Trump administration. If the past is prologue, we can expect to see new language in program participation agreements that ties Title IV funds to restrictions on academic freedom; new accreditation rules that prohibit standards around diversity, equity and inclusion; and certifications sneaked into grant terms and conditions that threaten strict penalties for activities that do not align with this administration’s ideology.

    Higher education institutions have been far from perfect, and some may even have drifted from their missions of serving all students in the best way possible. But what students deserve is a reform agenda that leads to student success, college completion and strong postsecondary outcomes. That is the agenda that should be endorsed by our nation’s leading education official. What the Manhattan Institute is proposing is not an agenda that is in our country’s best interest.

    We need an agenda that makes access to a college degree or credential of value affordable and accessible. We need an agenda that allows a range of viewpoints to thrive across college campuses and fosters intellectual diversity. We need an agenda that ensures college campuses are inclusive communities and that they serve all students, and we should have a contract between the federal government and colleges and universities that protects investments in our nation’s future and success—not one that threatens disinvestment and opens the door for political interference and federal intrusion.

    Amanda Fuchs Miller served as the deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the U.S. Department of Education in the Biden-Harris administration. She is the president of Seventh Street Strategies, which advises higher ed institutions, nonprofit organizations and foundations on policy and advocacy strategies.

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